“k** every one over ten.”
Gen. Jacob H. Smith, U.S. Sixth Separate Brigade, 1902
Sometimes like a sultan
I put on a disguise & walk among the people.
The women have Modigliani faces.
The men wear nooses of fire.
I try to tell the soldiers
that every insurrecto they grease is Walt Whitman
but they're getting angry & righteous
since he won't lie down or be licked.
I cover him with a blanket
I've just bought from a chuckling Eskimo.
It is many-colored
& uninfected by smallpox.
A murderer lurks among the stalls
but I do nothing to stop him—he's the President
disguised as an actor;
you can tell by his yellow teeth.
One by one he k**s my incarnations
while they browse for souvenirs
for my six thousand siblings who've gone
overseas for work.
From his hand he unfurls a bandage
long enough to blindfold
every bronze-skinned boy over the age of ten.
They co*k their heads, as if listening.
I hear footsteps behind me.
This is my last life
a vintage courtesy of a foreign power
ready to drink and black.
From the window of a nipa hut
Some kind of Indian offers me a wreath—